what do USA, Germany and Rwanda have in common?

hint: it is not the addiction for Coca-Cola

when I moved to Kigali, the president Paul Kagame was running for the fourth election in a row. which he eventually won with 98.8% of votes… he apparently nailed it!

I can testify that uncle Paul showed his best dance moves at the final election speech

after the horrible genocide of 1994, the country needed to find a way to unify itself again. the terms Hutu and Tutsi got forbidden and Kagame set a 5-steps strategy to replace South Africa as the new prominent African country.

one of these key steps centred on positioning Rwanda at the edge of digital development by stimulating the start-up ecosystem, and Kigali is now leading the game in the entrepreneurial landscape of Africa.

correct! that is Jack Ma pointing the path to digital growth to entrepreneurs from the whole Africa in Kigali 😲

few years before, Germany also started dealing with its past. to heal the wounds of its past, people understood that they needed to create public symbols that shout loud the new pillars of German society.

soon Berlinese passed from living with fear, in a split city… to walking in one on the most inclusive city in the world. such openness attracted a very peculiar crowd of people. the entropy between high presence of creative minds and the protestant hard work ethic, spurred on a fruitful entrepreneurial ecosystem second only to London in Europe.

sorry you are right, the Britons are supposed to be out — so Berlin is now the #1 startup hub in Europe 🏆!

“my god, help me to survive this deadly love” — nope, it was not a graffiti pro-LGBTQR…S🙄?

and USA? well, they actually never made peace with their past. despite being the country of the “American Dream”, people are still fighting against spread racism.

but tech companies managed to build a parallel progressive and liberal world, which laid out the fundamental pillar for American world predominance in innovation. the government has still the deepest pockets 💰, so tech leaders can’t mess up with the administration to not risk their companies’ future.

here is the point. starting from a very negative past, both in Rwanda, Germany and USA the start-up ecosystem emerged through three completely different paths:

• Rwanda: the country digitalization was imposed top-down, aiming to reunify a broken generation and raise a new national pride.
• Germany: the lively vibe in Berlin after the Cold War naturally gathered an entrepreneurial community from all around Europe.
• USA: it somehow created the most beautiful bubble away from the country’s inequalities, projecting a dreaming picture to the rest of the world.

dunno about you, but after having lived in these tech hubs, I am very curious to see how and where the next one will emerge!

just a random picture of me with some fellows from the mob in Chicago

this is it! by the way, did you get why “@iamadoughnut”?